There are too many military charities, and smaller ones in particular are fundraising in an "aggressive" and "lazy" way, the chief executive of Walking with the Wounded has said, in a follow-up to comments reported on Friday in The Times.
Ed Parker provoked controversy last week when he made critical comments in The Times after becoming “increasingly uncomfortable with the rhetoric coming out of the sector” on the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers.
He said he had approached the newspaper to criticise an approach which he said was predominantly coming from “smaller organisations”.
“We had been getting increasingly uncomfortable with the rhetoric coming out of the sector and, by in large, this rhetoric was coming out of the slightly smaller, perhaps less collaborative organisations," he said. "It was sending out the wrong message, not only to donors but to the veterans themselves.”
He said he spoke out because he feared the sector was becoming "lazy" in the way it used PTSD to raise money.
“We all recognise that when you’re communicating with the donating public you need to keep your message clear, concise and easy to understand but, at the same time, you mustn’t be lazy.
"At the moment I feel that we may be being a little lazy. Because these other areas are equally important and equally require our support.
When asked whether or not be believed there are too many charities operating in the same sphere, Parker replied: "Yes, I do".
He also said that smaller organisations were not working in the same, collaborative way that the “larger, more established” charities are.
“I think that what people would be surprised to see is the amount of collaboration that goes on amongst the large, established charities. There is a significant and effective degree of collaboration. The complexity comes in the length of the tail.”
“When you look at that scenario, where there are lots of small independent organisation trying to create their own noise to raise money, they’re probably going to put it up in pretty flashy lights to do so. I can see that happening and the message is going out in an uninformed way.”
He said that no charity fundraises collaboratively, but said that larger military charities each “fundraise with a slightly different audience in mind”. He said the problem comes when smaller organisations become “aggressive” in how they get their fundraising message across.
“I think that is where a little bit of focus has been lost by some of the smaller organisations who, in order to be engaging, are being maybe a little aggressive in how they tell the story of veteran’s mental health.”
He said that Walking with the Wounded have never “sensationalised” the issue of PTSD in its own beneficiaries to raise money from donors.
Parker alluded to what he called “some finger pointing” from other charities in the military veterans sphere after his comments were published in The Times, but said that the larger, more established charities had been “behaving themselves”.
He said that speaking to The Times was “a difficult discussion”, but said he did so in order to shift the discussion away from PTSD and on to a much wider range of issues surrounding veterans’ mental health which are currently not being discussed.
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